News

6.29.23 Governor Janet Mills and Author Shannon A. Mullen

Hello friends,

I wanted to take a moment this week to mention that we will be hosting Governor Mills and author Shannon Mullen here at Skidompha on Sunday evening, July 9th at 6:30pm, to talk about Mullen’s book, In Other Words, Leadership.

“In Other Words, Leadership tells the uplifting true story of an extraordinary connection between Maine’s current Governor Janet Mills and Ashirah Knapp, a young mother and homesteader who sent the governor weekly handwritten letters of support through the first pandemic year. In this debut book by public radio journalist Shannon A. Mullen — drawn from Ashirah’s letters and excerpts from the governor’s personal journals — you’ll come to know two very different women who forged an unexpected bond that helped them brave the COVID crisis.” https://steerforth.com/product/in-other-words-leadership-9781586423681/

This event will be held in our Porter Room and attendance will be strictly limited to 80 people, per the room’s maximum capacity. We will open our Elm Street entrance at 5:30 to begin seating. Admission bracelets will be handed out at the door. The event is free, but we do encourage donations either to our Food Pantry or to the Library proper.

Be well,
Matthew Graff
Executive Director
Skidompha Public Library

6.22.23 Pride and Juneteenth

Hello Friends

June is a month for inclusion, recognition and celebration, hosting both Juneteenth and Pride Month. Both of these celebrations encourage us to look back at our history as individuals and as a community; to appreciate how far we’ve come, where we need to go, and what part we play in helping each other thrive. I want to take this moment to cite Skidompha’s Mission and Values Statement:

Skidompha Library’s mission is to support and enrich our community by fostering literacy, providing ready access to information and resources, encouraging lifelong learning, and promoting cultural and social interactions.
Skidompha’s core values and beliefs are to be respectful, curious, socially aware, and inclusive. We honor the privacy and confidentiality of our patrons and aim to provide a safe and accessible environment.

Skidompha serves the community both in person or through outreach, including partnerships with community organizations, in-person, and virtual learning opportunities, technology assistance, and the provision of meeting spaces. Our collection is diverse, expansive, and evolving. We commit to the continuous reassessment of the programs and services we provide.  

Be well,
Matthew Graff
Executive Director
Skidompha Public Library

6.8.2023 Welcome, Frazier!

Hello friends,

There’s change happening in Skidompha! As Kristi moves to children’s services, we welcome Frazier Arets as our new Young Adult Services Librarian! 

Frazier comes to us with broad experience in community outreach and librarianship. Frazier received her bachelor’s from Saint Anselm College and went on to get her Masters of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island. She has experience working as a Reference and Circulation Librarian at the Newburyport Public Library, an Assistant Librarian at North Shore Community College, and as the Assistant Bookmobile Librarian and Homebound Librarian at the Beverly Public Library, Beverly in Massachusetts. 

We are so excited to have Frazier join our team and look forward to working with her and seeing what she brings to the Young Adult Services department. Please stop in and introduce yourself! 

Be well,

Matthew Graff
Executive Director
Skidompha Public Library

6.1.2023 Summer Reading Kick-Off

Dear Friends,

Today is the first day of June, and that means that it’s finally time to launch our Summer Reading Program! Everyone here has been busy planning, and we’re so excited to finally be able to share all of the books and activities that are coming up. This year’s theme is All Together Now, and we truly do want to encourage everyone to feel welcome and get involved.

We’ll be kicking the whole thing off at Skidompha this Saturday, June 3, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Come join us! While you’re here, you can register for summer reading and get your bingo sheet to complete challenges and be eligible for fun prizes. We’ll be giving away free books for our summer book clubs. Additionally, there will be art supplies for a sketchbook challenge, a concert from the Skidompha Strummers, smoothies, the chance to touch a fire truck, and a generally good time here with your friends at the Library!

The parking lot behind the Library will be closed to make room for all the fun activities, but the municipal lots will be open. We look forward to seeing you!

Be well,
The Skidompha Staff

5.25.2023 Memorial Day

Dear Friends

Memorial Day is already almost here! I have no celebratory plans, and instead look forward to a relaxing day of brunch, a long walk, and an enjoyable yet futile attempt to catch up on some reading. Amidst my rest and the celebrations I will remind myself of the solemnity of this holiday. First held just after the Civil War and known as Decoration Day, this is a day for remembrance and honoring those who have died in past wars. 

For those of you so inclined, please see this link https://www.va.gov/maine-health-care/work-with-us/volunteer-or-donate/ for VA volunteer opportunities in Maine. 

Be well,
Matthew

PS Our bees have built 6 new queen cells! A new queen is on the way!

5.18.2023 All Together Now

Hello friends,

As the days get warmer and the birds really ramp up their singing, you’ll find the library staff likewise stirring and planning and preparing for the annual summer reading program. This year’s theme is All Together Now, and we’re excited to celebrate this theme of kindness, compassion, and community with our community.

We have many new and exciting things planned for this summer: multi-generational book clubs, nature walks, art programming, gaming, music programs, a theater workshop, raffle prizes, and more! Oh, and did we mention free books? 

As with last year, we’ll have a large-scale community-made art installation on the front of the library. This year, we had over 500 people participate in the generation of these beautiful canvases. They’re all finished and hanging in the library atrium right now. Come get a close up look at the creativity found in our community before they’re hung outside later this month. 

We’re kicking off the Summer Reading Program on Saturday, June 3 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. with a library-wide party. In addition to Summer Reading Program registration, we’ll have smoothies, touch-a-truck, a ukulele concert from the Skidompha Strummers, free books, and a sketchbook challenge. 

We look forward to seeing you all on Saturday, June 3 and again throughout the summer. 

Be well,
Your Library Staff

5.11.2023 Changes in Youth Services

Hello friends,

It’s Jessie from Youth Services here. When I started volunteering at Skidompha in 2014, I did it as a way to give back to and to get involved in our community. When I began working here shortly thereafter, I never anticipated what a joy it would be and what an outstanding group of people I’d get to call my work family. Working at Skidompha has been incredibly rewarding and has helped me grow as a person in ways I never expected. The more involved I’ve become in the world of librarianship, the more I’ve become keenly aware of what a unique and special place we have in this library. It is for this reason that it saddens me to announce that my time at Skidompha is coming to a close at the end of May.

Beginning in the fall, I’ll be enrolling at the University of British Columbia in a dual-degree program in Library and Archive Sciences. I’m very excited to learn more about this field and to take what I’ve learned at Skidompha on the road, and my family is excited for a west coast Canadian adventure. Matthew isn’t alone in his nerdy love of whales, and so the prospect of regular orca sightings doesn’t hurt the transition either. 

If you told me at any point during my adolescence or young adult life that I’d be working with children and loving it, I’d have given you a serious side-eye and would probably have burst out laughing. Since beginning my work as Youth Services Librarian in 2019, I’ve discovered a world of incredible literature I never knew existed before. If you haven’t read any children’s books lately, I cannot recommend them enough (can I even call myself a librarian if I’m not pushing books in my farewell address?). We’ll have a big display in the atrium of youth books that are great for adults to read, but please remember you’re always welcome to check out any of our books any time. 

I’m thrilled to announce that Kristi, our current Teen Librarian, will be taking over as Youth Services Librarian beginning in June. Kristi is going to do a fantastic job. She has a natural ability to connect with kids, to help them grow, and most importantly to ensure they feel welcome and like they belong at Skidompha. To help our young library users with this transition, on Tuesday, May 30 at 10:00 a.m., we’ll be hosting a joint Story Time where both Kristi and I will read stories and sing songs. Additionally, throughout that day, we’ll have special treats and craft activities, and we encourage everyone to stop in for a visit. My final day at Skidompha will be Saturday, June 3, and I look forward to connecting with as many of you as possible before then. Regardless of where I land at the end of schooling, Skidompha will always have a special place in my heart and will always be home. 

Happy reading,
Jessie

5.04.2023 In Between

Hello friends,

Well, that weekend storm was quite a thing. My apologies to those who went without power, but I love storms, particularly thunderstorms. While not technically an April shower setting up May flowers, perhaps we can quantify it as such anyway. What’s a day between us and Mother Nature?

April-May is unique for me. That unsettled time when winter and spring are arguing about when to sit down and when to stand up. We’re in that “in between time”, waiting for the next big change or stage to settle in, and so it is with Skidompha. We’ve just finished our April break programming, and sit in that “in-between time” as our winter rhythm transitions to summer, counting the days down until Summer Read starts.

Summer is by far our busiest time. Foot traffic can increase by more than 30% as the weather warms and the town swells. The Skidompha Bookshop starts “rockin’ and rollin’” too, as people discover its magic for the first time. Jessie, Kristi, and Molly have been collaborating for months to put together a selection of really neat programming as well–a few spoilers below! We take a lot of pride in our programming and the connection created when people come together for an event, whether a concert, story time, or game night. I feel strongly that Skidompha’s ability to bring people together is among its greatest assets, and our aim to foster connection is among our most critical missions. 

I’ll have a more detailed preview of Summer Read as it draws nearer, and I look forward to seeing you here to enjoy the events. 

Be well,

Matthew Graff
Executive Director
Skidompha Public Library

4.27.23 Spring Bee Update

Hello friends,

I thought I’d slow things down a little after our busy April Break schedule, and talk about bees. I was doing some spring chores outside and noticed a bumble bee hanging onto the porch screening. She stayed there until after I finished my chores, looking a little tired and vulnerable. I thought of our own hive in the library and how much I enjoy their company, and gently persuaded Ms. Bumble into a small box along with a bottle cap full of fresh sugar water. An hour or so had passed when I checked on her next, and she had left her temporary shelter. I hope she is well and busy doing bumble bee things.

Our own Skidompha honey bees are on my mind these days. Spring is a critical and busy time for them. Our colony has officially “woken up” from its winter somnolence and has begun its own spring chores. Our queen is laying again, depositing a mix of worker and drone eggs that will mature into larva after a few days. She needs to mate with multiple drones only once in her life to gain the necessary genetic diversity to create a lifetime’s worth of eggs. Nurse bees–younger worker bees–feed and tend to the larva for roughly a week and then cap off the larva’s cell with wax. The larva then spend the next ten days or so maturing into an adult bee. At twenty one days an adorable, fluffy, adult bee will shakily emerge from its cell and begin its chores in the hive. Successful population renewal is crucial to the survival of the colony. 

Concurrently, worker bees will be flying out and foraging for nectar and pollen to feed the new young bees. As the sun gets stronger and the weather gets warmer, flights become more active and numerous and you will see more bees exiting and entering the hive at their perch on Main Street. I love taking a few minutes to watch those frenetic flights. Bees flying out so confidently with such an important mission. The colony is exceptionally vulnerable at this time, and risks abound. Without a healthy, laying queen, a healthy population of workers, and solid source of nectar and pollen, the colony will not survive. 

This virtuous circle, new bees born requiring more food, which require more bees to gather, which provides more sustenance for more bees… continues perhaps and until the colony grows too large for the hive. Should that happen the bees will swarm. Workers rear a new queen to take the place of the original, and the original queen and approximately half the colony leave to pursue a new location to start a new hive. Swarming is a natural and amazing thing for bees, and helps promote population growth and diversity. How the bees choose their new hive sight is an amazingly cool process, and a good topic for our next bee checkin.

Be well,

Matthew Graff
Executive Director
Skidompha Public Library

4.20.23 Our Spring Appeal

Dear Friends,

Filling in for Matthew this week, I’m happy to have the chance to chat with Skidompha’s subscribers!

Any new job comes with its share of surprise discoveries, and with luck those surprises are of the happy variety. This has definitely been the case as I’ve settled in to working at Skidompha and have learned more and more about how the library operates. I was impressed to find out how much of our funding comes directly from donations. Most libraries receive the bulk of their funding from municipalities. Skidompha is different- about eighty percent of our revenue comes from gifts and donations. This is incredible! It’s a realization which makes every day at the library feel remarkable. Every activity and program, every book and movie borrowed, truly seem like a part of a collective enterprise. It speaks so well of our community that such value is placed on a public library.

I’m excited to help foster the relationships between Skidompha and our patrons. Our Spring Appeal, which just launched, is a great opportunity to support the library. Summer is a busy time for us, with many new books to recommend, fun events happening all the time, and a Summer Reading program we can’t wait to share with you. The generosity of our community is invaluable and so appreciated; Skidompha is a truly public venture, and everyone who volunteers time, money, materials, or their efforts to the library should be exceptionally proud of what they have helped to create. I invite you to give to our Spring Appeal – we’re happy to accept donations via mail, website, or in person at the circulation desk. Thank you for helping to keep our cooperative, energetic library strong!

I’d like to take the opportunity, as well, to thank the voters and town of Nobleboro for increasing their support of Skidompha in their budget this year. We’re grateful for the funding the town always provides, and happy to have so many of our neighbors and friends from Nobleboro as patrons.

I hope everyone has been enjoying the beautiful advent of spring, and to see you at the library soon!

Chloe Deblois
Development Director
Skidompha Public Library